


Something Yet to Learn

by tfm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, vaguely implied ADHD Beauregard Lionett, vaguely implied Autistic Beauregard Lionett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 21:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21106631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: After escaping the Heirloom Sphere, and returning to Zadash, Beau heads to the library to test out her new skills.





	Something Yet to Learn

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously set at a point in time after they eventually do escape the sphere, and is thus a little vague on what may or may not happen with the Laughing Hand's heart.
> 
> Fluff? Angsty? Introspectivey? Who the fuck knows.

Something Yet to Learn

The journey back to Zadash only  took six seconds, but it  felt like it  took a lifetime. 

They’d been from Nicodranas, to Rosohna, back to the  E mpire in the span of just a few hours, and  had been running non-stop from the day they first went into the Happy Fun Ball. Or the Heirloom Sphere, Beau suppose d that they should call it now. That’s what it  was , after all.

There  wa s a list of half a dozen things they  had to do in Zadash; things that they hadn’t had time to do the first time they’d been here. Check in with the Gentleman, check in with Pumat Sol, check in at the Pillow Trove. Beau ha d her own list of things that  had nothing to do with the rest of the Mighty Nein.  Things involving punching shit and reading shit.  Not necessarily in that order.

First, check in and see if Dairon ha d showed up at the Cobalt Soul. Second, do some godsdamned reading. Somehow, they’ d come out of the  Heirloom Sphere with just as many questions as answers, and there  were thousands of books with uncracked spines that  might hold the answers that they’re looking for.

Thousands of books that now, hopefully, she’d have a chance of getting through ten times quicker than she used to, thanks to the fancy new Headband of Intellect that they’d found in the Heirloom Sphere. It was still an unfamiliar sensation against her scalp, no less thanks to the leather that Jester had wrapped around it, and the braids that kept it in place.

Beau bid the rest of the group farewell, and promised that she would meet up with them at the Leaky Tap when she had finished her business.

Dairon, they told her, was out on business, but was still in Zadash, which was good news. The last Beau knew, Dairon had been in Nicodranas, and while the road north wasn’t necessarily dangerous, these were troubled times. Anything could happen to anyone.

She got a few funny looks in the halls; word had clearly spread about their actions in Port Damali and Rexxentrum. The only Cobalt Soul operative to get banned from two of the archives. That was probably a record. The fact that they were apparently using her as a cautionary tale was not a point that had gone unheeded. But there were worse things in the world than being a troublemaker. Like being ignorant. Like not doing everything you could to find out as much as possible about the bullshit you were getting into. Not doing everything possible to make sure you had all the tools at your disposal for the fight ahead. Getting temporarily banned from a couple of libraries was nothing compared to what else was out there.

The library itself was close to empty. There were a couple of unfamiliar looking monks that were probably trainees, judging by their wide-eyed expressions, and the way they jumped when they heard footsteps. Beau supposed that everyone at the archive was probably still a little on edge. Sometimes she had trouble remembering that other people weren’t quite thinking the same thing she was.

She set her things down at a secluded table, and wandered over to the stacks. She’d scrawled down half-a-dozen topics of interest that she wanted to look into while she was here, knowing that if she didn’t write them down, she would have forgotten them. At least, that would have been the case even just a few days ago, but now...

Focus hadn’t always come easily for Beau. It was one of the reasons why all of that library bullshit had been so fucking hard that first time she’d been here, why meditation ha d always been something that she’d struggle d  with. Even afterwards, studying the things she wanted to study, or needed to study, like the Angel of Irons, or the Laughing Hand, it had always taken an hour or so to get into the swing of it, and even then, the slightest noise  could pull her away for  almost twenty minutes until she reoriented herself.

Now, things were a little clearer.

It wasn’t even that she had learned anything new.  There was knowledge that had always been there, shrouded by some kind of cloud. Now the clouds had parted, and things that had been a little obscured before, she was seeing in a new light.  Connections that had been vague and ill-conceived previously, were now so simple, she wondered why she’d ever considered them a problem.

There  wa s a strange memory that  came to light, that she’s never really  dwelled on  before, of being ten years old,  wearing a frilly pink dress , and sitting in a straight-backed chair in the library,  reading about Wildemount trade routes. Or rather, being forced to read about Wildemount trade routes.

“If you’re so interested in books,” Father had said, “Then you can at least learn something worthwhile,” and he’d set her tutor to work on teaching her about supply and demand, and the botany and taxonomy of grapes, and the wine-making process, all boring things that she’d learned plenty about already, simply by hanging around with the halflings that worked in the winery. Her halfling wasn’t half bad either (and that was something that Father had grudgingly accepted as Good, because if she wasn’t going to be a boy, then at the very least, she could be Useful). The things she _wanted_ to learn about, like history, and magic, and the Gods, she had to wait until she could sneak down to the library after dark, skimming pages by moonlight. That was before, of course, she realized she could sneak out of her bedroom through the window and along a tree branch, and engage in nighttime activities that were a little more unsavory. Somewhere along the line, it had become harder and harder to sit through a tutoring session without her mind wandering off to other things.

No-one had ever sung praises of her intelligence, if there had ever really been any at all. Mother had considered it a burden, more than anything; a distraction from the pageantry, and education in matter of class and stuck-upishness, like cross-stitch, and basket-weaving. “You’ll never find a man willing to marry you if you’re so outspoken about things, Beauregard,” Mother had said. Beau had been six years old at the time, and marriage had been the last thing on her mind. Never mind the fact that not once in her life had she ever had the inclination to marry a man.

Beau read some stuff about Jourrael, and took down notes. Read some stuff about Graz’zt, took down a few more notes. She was about ten books deep, and her hand was beginning to cramp up by the time she felt the waves of fatigue washing over her.  It had been a long couple of weeks. A long couple of months. A long fucking year. They’d gone from crisis to crisis with barely a moment’s rest. The last time they’d had any semblance of peace had probably been that week they’d moved into the Xhorhaus, and even that was fraught with the uncertainty of being in the middle of fucking  _Xhorhas_ .

Beau had never particularly been one for sitting still, but even she knew eventually, enough was enough. When this was all over, when Obann was dead, when they had Yasha back, when the war and the demonic incursions, and the planes to another fucking world were all gone, they could take a holiday.

It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought to fall asleep to.

Beau woke to a hand on her shoulder. She started, and made to flip the other person over her, but the hand drew back just as quickly.

‘Good reflexes,’ Dairon said, and Beau felt her brain catch up to her body. A little more quickly than it usually did in the mornings, maybe. ‘Letting your guard down, that is not as good.’

Beau was about to make a scathing comment about who was ever going to attack her in a library, but then she remembered that it had been just weeks since Obann, and Yasha, and the Laughing Hand had torn through this place, slaughtering without care. Dairon seemed to have the same thing on her mind.

‘I wish you had told me,’ they said, ‘When we last spoke, that the Cobalt Soul had come under attack.’

‘I forgot,’ Beau admitted, and to say it felt like a gut punch. Because it wasn’t a small thing that had happened; they’d just had so many things going on, so many things they needed to do, that the thought of stopping to explain hadn’t even crossed her mind. That she hadn’t even considered it as something that outweighed the importance of stopping Obann and the Laughing Hand, and...and Yasha.

Dairon gave a steely stare, but said nothing. ‘Zeenoth said you have been in the reading room for almost eighteen hours.’ Beau stared at her. It certainly hadn’t felt like that long; she’d come, and found the books she’d wanted, and then found a few more, and then found some more after that…apparently it had just...spiraled a little.

‘Trying to save a friend.’

Trying to figure out  _how _ to save a friend, more like.  Would killing Obann free Yasha? It stood to reason that that would be the case, but there was only one way to find out. So far, though, all of their plans had ended in failure, or misery, or both. They needed to get ahead of the game, without relying on Essek’s endless patience in teleporting them everywhere. Those were some favors that they were definitely going to have to be paying back soon.

Beau snapped the book that she’d been sleeping on shut, and stretched her arms out. ‘What time is it?’

‘A little after dawn,’ Dairon commented, with a just barely raised eyebrow.

‘Shit,’ Beau muttered. She hadn’t meant to spend the night, and her neck was certainly not going to thank her for doing so. At the very least, though, her journal had several dozen new pages worth of notes, to the point where she would probably have to head into town and buy a new one. Maybe find something custom where she could add more pages as they were needed. It was interesting, though; for all that she’d always been an avid note-taker, they seemed less necessary now. While she couldn’t quite rise to the Caleb-esque challenge of being able to recite her notes from memory, she could fairly clearly remember at least the main points of all the books she’d looked at during her monster reading session. Damn, this circlet was coming in pretty fucking handy already, though Beau thought it was more than a little bit responsible for the sharp pain in her right temple.

‘All this reading, perhaps they will make an Archivist of you yet,’ Dairon said, wryly, and Beau was pretty sure they were joking. No-one in their right mind would make Beau an Archivist, because that would mean they would have to deal with her actually being at the Cobalt Soul, rather than out in the world where she couldn’t do any harm.

‘It’s funny,’ she told Dairon. ‘When I was a kid, I could crack open a book, and spend hours reading it from cover to cover, without a care in the world of what else was going on.’

Dairon looked a little startled, clearly not expecting the sudden delve into personal history.

‘Then I started running around, climbing trees, chasing girls….and then I pick up a book, and it feels like a struggle to get through it, unless it’s something I’m really interested in.’ Beau shrugged. If she hadn’t been kidnapped by a bunch of fucking librarians (those fucking hypocrites, judging her for being a troublemaker, when they kidnapped a godsdamned teenager), she’d probably have spent her life doing...well, definitely not doing this. ‘Kind of feels good to get back into it. Not sure if I could handle it for a career, though.’ 

‘I have never much been one for book learning,’ Dairon admitted. Beau grinned. It was ridiculous to work for a library and not be interested in books. One of the boons of being an Expositor rather than an Archivist, and Dairon clearly agreed with her. Beau thought she would probably die of boredom if she had to spend her whole life cataloging things instead of going out and punching shit. ‘Perhaps you would prefer to train your body instead.’

‘Gladly,’ Beau agreed. Just because she had a fancy new toy to help her think better, didn’t mean she was about to neglect her body. The headband, after all, wasn’t about to help her punch any harder, or catch arrows any better.

Dairon took Beau down to the training room, and wiped the floor with her.

Whatever else happened, there would be always be something yet to learn.


End file.
